It’s been great growing up with the creation of the internet and DVDs since they brought about a lot of filmmaking resources for those of us who didn’t have easy access to it, outside of books. Just in the past few years, the internet has exploded with helpful sites and blogs for the aspiring filmmaker. The trick, of course, is finding them and I’d like to present here the useful ones we’ve found lately.

The Anonymous Production Assistant’s Blog. If you want to get into the industry, chances are you’re going to be a PA at some point, and this gives you a little heads up on what it’s like.

Studio Daily blog. Lots of tech related industry news.

FilmSound.org. Everything you could want in sound design.

My Film Project ‘09. This guy chronicled his process of making an independent feature film and includes lots of materials including his proposal and screenplay.

Truly Free Film. Blog which breaks down film-festival advice to its most essential elements and delves into hardcore topics such as copyrights and branding.

Screenwriters:

Celtx. If you don’t have Final Draft or any kind of screenwriting software. It’s free, and although we’ve never used it, we know people who have and they like it. A warning, however: If you actually want to send your script out anywhere, you kinda need to shell out for a premium program. The main reason? Page count. Celtx formats pages just differently enough from the industry standard to really blow your page count. For anything short of professional submission, though, it should do you fine.

Wordplayer. This was started by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot, the guys who wrote the Pirates movies and lots of other things. The most useful thing for me are the columns which give lots of tips for writers as well as general industry advice.

John August’s blog. More helpful stuff from another established screenwriter.

Hollywood University: or How to Get a Job in Hollywood. Started by a girl from Kansas who wanted to move to LA to work in TV. Lots of tips as well as general advice to newbies wanting to move to LA or just enter the industry. She also just started the HU Scriptwriter’s Network which is like the facebook for screenwriters. If you’re looking for work, roommates, or whatever it’s really helpful.

For just keeping up with film news, you’re best off with having a handful of websites that you check regularly.

Nick and I will try to update this post with more sites as we find them, or we’ll just make another post. We’ll also be making more posts with recommendations for books, dvds, etc.

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And here are some more links from me (Nick)

List of organizations willing to provide free information to writers. Really invaluable for any kind of research!

Screenwriter/Showrunner Jane Espenson has returned to the blogosphere and we are better for it.

Alex Epstein is another screenwriter, but one who’s very well informed and who often answers questions from readers in his posts.

Art of the Title Sequence does a swell job at examining the opening credits of films new and old. They also sometimes post interviews with the creators of such sequences which tend to be fun to read.

We’re not posting any kind of tutorials for stuff like After Effects or Final Cut Pro because you can easily find such things on youtube or vimeo if you search for them, and they would probably be better than what we’d post.

All of these links are a good start, and we’ll probably make another post in the future with more. Hopefully this helps!